Treasures that scientists keep on ice

Posts Tagged ‘art’

I posted the above photo once before, but didn’t explain any of the fun details of artist-designer Thomas Thwaites‘s visit to the RVC to dissect a goat with us. Now his show has just finished in London, celebrating the end of his project and the near-completion of his book about his experience trying to live life as a goat. This week, I went to his east side gallery and had some time to chat with Thomas about his transhuman experiences. Because the project has a strong biomechanics, anatomy, art and science theme to it, I’m posting a photo-blog post about all of that. It’s goat to be seen to be believed! I for one wouldn’t mind being a goat right now; I could use a break from my decrepit body…

Stomach-Churning Rating: Too late, there’s the goat pic above and more like it below. I’d give those a 8/10; no kidding. The puns make it worse, too.

The context. Thomas never did get to gallop (sorry, spoiler!) but he did manage a trot, and some other capricious behaviours. I forgot to ask him if he’d tried the Goat Simulator. I have; it’s good for an hour of fun hircosity.

Starting the dissection at the RVC, to get inside a goat.

Hide.

Fore- and hindlimbs; comparative design for inspiring prosthetics.

Dissections on display!

Prototype goat-suits. Their mobility was too limited.

The prototype in the foreground could not move without falling down.

Inhabited-goat-suit shots.

The final Goat-Suit: custom prosthetics, a helmet, and some form-fitting casts.

Thomas Thwaites with the goat-suit.

The forelimb prosthesis. I was worried it would hurt his wrists but apparently it transferred the loads mainly to the forearms. It was made by a prosthetics clinic up in Salford.

Photos from rambling around the Swiss Alps in the goat-suit with goats.

Trip-trap-trip-trap… (but no trolls)

Goat-suit in action! With Goat-Pro camera, I see.

Acceptance?

And the goat that we had dissected, skeletonized at RVC and re-articulated by Thomas:

Welcome back to my two-part British Museum series; I covered crocodiles before. Here, I celebrate the less common creatures depicted in human art, design and culture. And we begin back in Egypt, with a bit of crocodile to provide a nice segue:

With the head and torso of a hippo, the legs of a lion and the tail of a crocodile (not easily visible here), the Egyptian goddess Taweret just rocks. More info here.

Anatomy in art is best when the anatomy is actually used as a substrate for art, as in this later piece from Egypt, and another piece that follows it:

Scapula (shoulder blade) from an ox, with Roman enscriptions. Click to embovine for closer examination and explanation.

~8000 BC red deer antler headdress from England (click to enstaggen for closer examination and text details in upper left). Picturing an Ice Age shaman wearing this gives me a sense of awe.

Human anatomy in our artwork, to my mind, reaches its pinnacle in Aztec religious masks like this, which was too cool to omit:

Use of a human skull to make a stunning mask decorated with obsidian, representing Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror and master of creation/destruction; slayer of Quetzalcoatl. Badass dial turned to 11! He is also sometimes represented as a jaguar.

Continuing the mask theme, the following masks show off sawfish, sharks and other species from the region:

Awesome diversity of ceremonial fish masks from Africa.

Lions find their way into plenty of artwork such as European royal heraldry. Yet the huge depictions of an Assyrian lion hunt in the British Museum are not only anatomically impressive but also evocative of a time long past, when Asian lions ranged far across human territories. In viewers today, however, they may inspire more sympathy for the fleeing lions than awe for the lordly charioteers, horsemen and archers that pursue them.

I finish with some statues and other depictions of animals that are more globally uncommon than lions:

You don’t see tapirs much in art but here seems to be one, as a bronze statuette from ~400s AD in China.

I love Indian artwork for its plethora of proboscideans. Here, a statue of the Indian elephant diety Ganesha from ~750 AD, engaged in a dance. As the placard explains, Ganesha got his elephant’s head when Shiva freaked out and cut off the human one, then promised to make amends by substituting the head of the next animal he saw.

More dancing! North Chinese (~11-12th century) ceramic plate depicting a funky, vaguely humanoid dancing bear tied to a pole. The anatomical exaggerations here make the piece more memorable and vaguely demonic, but not so much as the next item.

The dance is over, thanks to ass demons. That’s right, ass demons. Many Burmese were surely frightened or inspired by these terracota warriors from 1400s AD. These warriors represented king Mara’s forces that attempted to disrupt the Buddha’s meditation. As ass demons would tend to do. (I hate it when that happens)

I hope you enjoyed this brisk dance through atypical animals and their anatomy in artwork! Coming next, a look at one of the greatest anatomists ever.

I visited the British Museum a while ago with my daughter and was struck by some of the animal imagery in the loot on display– particularly, as an archosaurophile, the crocodiles (Crocodylia, crocodylians, etc.; no alligatoroids to show in this post). So I decided to go back and photograph some of them for a blog post about the more obscure and rare animals that sometimes appear in human art and design.

It’s easy to think of horses, lions, dogs, eagles and other familiar, domestic or prized beasts in human decorations. Yet what roles do less common animals play? This post is the first of two on the unsung beasties of human artwork, as represented in the British Museum.

Stomach-Churning Rating: 1/10. Tame art and a dried crocodile skin.

Wherever humans and crocodiles coexist, the primeval appearance and dangerous potential of crocodiles are sure to impress themselves upon our psyche. Hence they will manifest themselves in art. This should especially apply in the early days of a civilization, before we extirpate local crocodiles or exclude them to the hinterlands, or in cases in which crocodylians become revered and protected.

Much of Western culture lacks such an emphasis, because it developed in more temperate climes where crocodiles were long since absent. It’s fun to think about what our culture would be like if it had developed with crocodiles as a prominent aspect, as in Egypt, which is the natural place to begin our tour, featuring mummies of course!

All images can be clicked to emcroccen them.

Small Nile crocodile mummy from >30 B.C, El Hiba, Egypt

Second small Nile crocodile mummy from >30 B.C, El Hiba, Egypt

Those mummies remind me of a recent scientific study that used such mummies to reveal the history of the “cryptic” species Crocodylus suchus, a close relative of the Nile croc C. niloticus, and one that seems to be more threatened.

We proceed on our tour with a box showing an example of shabti, or doll-like funeral offerings of “enchanted” mummified figurines:

This shabti box was for a noble daughter, Neskshons, in Thebes, from around 650 B.C.

A crocodile deity receives the shabti from the departed soul, accompanied by serpent god as well as a more human, ankh-bearing divinity.

Next, some amazingly preserved papyrus scrolls:

This papyrus is from around 900 B.C., with short blurbs about the woman Tentosorkon, part of a new style of funeral provisions in the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt.

Crocodile featured in the story of Tentosorkon. What’s it doing? Why is a feathered snake-thing touching its butt? I wish I knew.

The “Litany of Ra”, from around 1000 B.C., which is a style like that of the previous 22nd Dynasty papyrus and would have decorated a tomb’s wall, dedicated to the lady Mutemwia. Ra, the sun god, is shown in his different manifestations, including a crocodile form, called Sobek-ra (AKA Sebek); a protector and comforter of the dead:

But crocodiles also feature prominently in other cultures around the world– I was hoping to find some in Thai, South American, or other cultures’ art (especially east/western Africa). However, the museum didn’t exhibit any I could find. I did find these, though, starting with this fantastic Roman armour with a great backstory (and hard to take photos of; argh!):

Roman soldiers in a Sobek cult, running around Egypt while wearing badass armour and getting into all kinds of Bronze Age trouble: I DEMAND TO SEE A SWORD-AND-SANDALS MOVIE FEATURING THIS!

There were more tenuous links to crocodiles– surely some dragon images throughout the world relate at least partly to crocodiles, such as this one which seems very crocodylian to me:

A water spirit figure called a belum, from Sarawak, Malaysia, 18/1900s. Belief among the Melanau people was that these dragons would wrap their tails around someone’s body to protect or drown them. Possibly inspired by saltwater or Phillipine crocs that they lived near.